Phish.net was delighted to have the chance recently to talk to the accomplished production designers and engineers at TAIT Towers, the team that designed and built the LED video screens that debuted in 2016 as part of Phish's new-look onstage setup. As you'll read, TAIT is a company with longstanding ties to and a love for Phish, who were only too thrilled to be asked to work with the band on the most dramatic revision to its stage presentation in its 33-year history.

You couldn't miss it. When Phish took their usual places onstage in St. Paul to kick off their 2016 summer tour they had some impressive new hardware at their disposal. First, behind them in a half-circle, stretching from stage right to stage left, was a five-and-a-half-foot tall wall of light-emitting diode (LED) video screens. Second, above their heads was another huge, rectangular screen, facing down and toward the audience. As the show started, colors and images began playing across both screens. For the entire first set, the overhead array stayed in a compact rectangle. But when things got cooking at the start of the second set—during the throbbing minor-key “Mike’s Song” jam—the big rectangle fragmented, spreading apart into a patterned array of smaller screens, a look reminiscent of the hordes of perpetually attacking spacecraft from classic arcade games like Space Invaders and Galaga.

Welcome to the 251st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first and easiest of December. The winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @dbertsch who quickly identified the 11/30/94 My Friend, My Friend outro jam and wins his fourth MJM – he's now more than halfway to Emeritus status. Will he get there next? Stop by on Monday for MJM252, when @Dog_Faced_Boy takes the reins.

This interview gave us the chance to talk in depth about the history of the site and the Foundation, while hearing about the incredible work that all the volunteers have done for 20+ years. We touch on the evolution of the website, the community’s relationship with the band, and of course, the Phish Companion. Hey, it's the holidays! Pick one up for a friend or loved one.

Marco also shares memories from his first show, 4.17.92 at the Warfield in San Francisco. We talk a bit about that tour and that show, and we play a few tracks from that night. A great memory for Marco and a good show to revisit.

If you haven’t listened to our podcast, we hope you give it a shot! We regularly combine the music of Phish with interesting guests from in and around the scene. You can find us on iTunes and Twitter. We’re looking forward to many more collaborations with this team.

Also, there's a contest! The Mockingbird Foundation donated one copy of the book as well as a really cool poster. All you have to do is share this post with your friends on Facebook and/or Twitter using #MbirdHFPod, and we'll pick two random winners (one for the book and one for the poster) on Monday, December 5.

#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration. We can't think of a better group to embody this sentiment than the Phish community. Today only, every donation made to The Mockingbird Foundation through our Give the Gift of Music fundraising page will receive a thank you gift based on the giving level. There are 10 thank you gifts at varying levels! All donations over $40 receive a copy of The Phish Companion. Here are a few ways you can give the gift of music (see below for the rest!):

Donate $10, receive an I Read The Book Bumper Sticker

Donate $45, receive a copy of The Phish Companion

Donate $70, receive a copy of The Phish Companion and one Phish Companion Limited Edition Print

Welcome to the 250th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday! In order to celebrate this momentous occasion, and to cap off a yearlong celebration of the release of the third edition of The Phish Companion, we have put together the greatest prize in MJM history. The winner will not only receive the usual MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net, but as a thank you for enduring the pop-up ads this year, the winner of MJM250 will also receive a copy of The Phish Companionand the complete set of eight (!) TPC3 limited edition prints from The Mockingbird Foundation!

And just because we're feeling the holiday spirit, starting Wednesday, November 30th, anyone can get $5 off the book using the code MYSTERY at phishcompanion.com. This offer is good through Sunday, December 4th, at 11:59 PM PT / Monday, December 5th, at 2:59 AM ET, as long as there are still books in stock – the already limited supply is dwindling rapidly during the holiday season, so don't hold off any longer!

When David Bowie died in 2016, the outcry was much stronger than that for the passing of a usual celebrity. The reason for that is that Bowie represented something more than a musician and an actor. His works spoke to those who stand on the outside of society, feeling somewhat alien to the roles that they were supposed to play. There’s a reason why the image most people have of David Bowie is of an alien; he sang about the society but never felt like he was in it....

The all-volunteer phan-run Mockingbird Foundation has sent unsolicited $1,000 checks to three Native American groups in celebration of Native American Heritage Month. The groups are in ND, NH, and DE, the last three states in which the Foundation had not previously provided grants. Mockingbird has now given money in all 50 states, plus D.C. Read more...

Welcome to the 249th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the penultimate MJM of November. The winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the FIVE mystery jam clips. Each person gets one guess – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Note: Today we're tweaking the format – today's MJM is a race. At 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET, I will post a SoundCloud link here on the blog. The FIVE clips (each 30 seconds long) are extremely well-known jams from Phish's vast live canon. Hit refresh when the time comes, and we'll see who can name them all first. You ready?

Attention: I know every week I say something like "stay tuned for next week's MJM," but this week I mean it more than ever. Next week we hit MJM #250, and we will be giving away the greatest prize package in MJM history. You'll have most of the week to solve the puzzle. Open up your setlist notebooks, fire up your LivePhish and PhishOD apps, wipe your keyboards clean, get a few dozen browser tabs ready, and lock yourself in the basement – you're going to need all the help you can get to solve MJM250. But I guarantee you it'll be worth your time given the 10-part gift we've put together for next week! MJM250 drops at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET sharp here at phish.net.

Welcome to the 248th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second of November. The winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Hint:

Answer: Congrats to @runlikecarini who won his third MJM by identifying the 4/10/94 Antelope. Do we have another savant on our hands? Apparently the hint – an image of the buildling on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals – gave him a push in the right direction towards Antelope. But he didn't recognize (nor did he need to) that the hint had another layer to it: this week's clip was the Buffalo Antelope. Get it now? The MJM would be remiss if it didn't mention @Dog_Faced_Boy, who texted me a couple hours after MJM248 was posted with the correct answer – though his solving this week's MJM was completely unaided by his admin status, I asked him to withhold the answer unless no one else had solved it by this morning. See you next week for MJM249, when I'll throw yet another different style of MJM at you, and be sure to mark you calendars: On November 28th, 2016, the MJM will celebrate making it a quarter of the way to a thousand MJMs with a special MJM250 extravaganza, which may or may not have the most ridiculously awesome set of prizes ever given out for an MJM winner.

Welcome to the 247th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first and easiest of November. The winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @HarborSeal who solved this week's MJM in a mere 15 minutes, earning his second win. He didn't have time to notice that MJM247 took place on the 18 year anniversary of the 11/7/98 Mike's Song, which took place in the same town celebrating their first World Series championship in 108 years – but he did notice that the jam featured this week was from the UIC run he had loaded onto his iPod a few weeks earlier. If you're feeling down today, perhaps hearing the entire 11/7/98 Mike's will cheer you up with its mix of funk, ambiance, and uplifting hose. The rest of that run ain't no slouch either. Stay tuned for MJM248, which will hopefully last at least 20 minutes before being solved!

Note: Just as a reminder, hints for the MJM are released, if needed,on Tuesday ~24 hours after MJM starts, and the answer is always revealed on Wednesday. If no one has answered correctly by ~48 hours after the MJM starts, the competition will be called and the answer will be revealed then. If it has been solved correctly before then, I tend to take my time on Wednesday posting the answer. If you're ever unsure if the MJM has been solved, and you don't see a particular answer with more thumbs up than the rest – a good (but not perfect!) indication it's been solved correctly – you can always check the MJM Results Spreadsheet (linked below the MJM every week). Even if I haven't updated the Blog post with the winner, I (almost) always update the spreadsheet with the winner as soon as I see the correct answer.

Five years. Just five years. That’s all the time earth has left before apocalyptic doom and the end of time. Imagine getting that news out of the blue while strolling down a sidewalk.

Many people can remember an average day of going to school, or meeting a friend for lunch, or shuffling around the office, or walking through a marketplace when startling news comes on TV. Quickly, strangers, friends, acquaintances, tall-short people, somebody people and nobody people are all huddled together listening to a normally stoic reporter read horrendous news: ...

“Friends” debuted during the 6/29/16 Mann Center show in Philadelphia as a brief upbeat rocker which served as the energy sustaining bridge between the “Crosseyed & Painless” and “Down with Disease” that opened the second set. Being a Fishman song, it seems natural that it would follow “Ha Ha Ha” when it made it’s second appearance during the pride of Jamesville-Dewitt High School’s hometown Lakeview Amphitheater show on 7/10/16. Fish introduced it as “a song about outer space” adding that it was his favorite subject. ...

Esteemed printmaker Isadora Bullock has created a gorgeous art print for The Mockingbird Foundation to celebrate the recent publication of The Phish Companion, 3rd Edition. "Out of Control" is a four-color linocut reduction print, in a signed and numbered edition of 150. Previously only available from the Foundation at PhanArt shows, the print will be released for sale online on Thursday, October 20th at noon ET (9am PT) via the Bottleneck Gallery web store. All proceeds benefit music education for kids. This is a small edition from a very popular artist, so run run run on Thursday and don't miss out!

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The Mockingbird Foundation

The Mockingbird Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Phish fans in 1996 to generate charitable proceeds from the Phish community.

And since we're entirely volunteer – with no office, salaries, or paid staff – administrative costs are less than 2% of revenues! So far, we've distributed over $1,000,000 to support music education for children – hundreds of grants in all 50 states, with more on the way.